A myth-busting explainer on Tesco trees, ‘renamed’ cakes, and the real purpose behind these manufactured panics.
I vowed I wasn’t going to do a ‘they’re cancelling Christmas’ Substack after doing a quick Bluesky thread on it, and talking about it very briefly on James O’Brien’s LBC show.
However, I’ve changed my mind for several reasons:
- The manufactured outrage is not going away and is still seeping into the mainstream media, which means you may meet people in real life who believe this nonsense, and I want to arm you with the facts.
- It illustrates some manipulative media techniques to look out for in future.
- And because I think it’s essential to recognise the pernicious meaning behind the messaging.
So buckle up for your ultimate ‘they’re cancelling Christmas’ mythbusting explainer guide!
Background
The story pipeline
A right-wing Twitter account posted a picture of some boxed Tesco Christmas trees that were labelled Evergreen Tree with the words:
🚨TESCO ARE NO LONGER CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS❗️
Their Christmas trees are now called Evergreen trees🙄
Tesco do better.…
That tweet has had 3 million views at the time of writing.
This was then retweeted by Conservative former London mayoral candidate Susan Hall, with: “No, no, no Tesco, they are CHRISTMAS TREES!”
This was enough to trigger a Telegraph article, which used Hall’s quotes as the basis for their story. Simultaneously, GB News discussed the article on their show (clearly having seen it before it was published), and later that day, the Express and Daily Mail had their own articles out.
All the articles include the claim that this ‘name change’ is Tesco trying ‘not to offend’ or that Tesco is ‘offended by Christmas’.
Two days later, columnist Allison Pearson published a piece in The Telegraph, entitled “Why Tesco cancelled Christmas”.
This is a classic example of media laundering: a fringe claim made by an anonymous account gets political validation, which gives news desks an excuse to ‘report’ on it, giving the narrative mainstream validation.
The Reality
In reality, this Evergreen Tree is part of Tesco’s luxury range of artificial Christmas trees, and rather than calling them all just ‘Christmas tree’, they have called them:
- 6.5ft Luxury Evergreen tree
- 6.5ft Luxury pre-lit alpine tree
- 6.5ft Luxury pre-lit snowy pinecone tree.
And they all sit in the Christmas section of Tesco’s in pallet boxes labelled “MERRY CHRISTMAS”. You’d think if Tesco was trying to cancel Christmas or was offended by it, they’d be a bit more thorough with their branding! A search on the Tesco website will return 1,874 results for Christmas Tree, and over 10,000 results for Christmas. It really is still very much a thing!
What that anonymous Twitter account shared, and the newspapers then wrote about, was a cropped image of the boxes, claiming the removal of the word Christmas. The full images show there has been no attempt to remove the word, even if it is not printed directly on the boxes themselves.
Weirdly, the Express actually used the images containing the words Merry Christmas to illustrate their article!
History
You’d be forgiven for thinking that maybe this was a new decision, given the fuss being made. But what quickly became clear, as people were getting their own artificial trees out, is that many brands have been labelled this way for at least 15 years. And the anti-Woke brigade just never noticed until this year…
Even The Sun had been reporting on Luxury Cone and Berry Trees (2019) and Evergreen trees (2020/21) seemingly without complaining about any ‘name change’!
The Christmas tree ‘renaming’ is entirely manufactured outrage.
But they didn’t stop there…
Christmas cakes
The same anonymous account that started the Tesco Christmas tree rage, swiftly moved on to Christmas cakes with this tweet:
🚨SEEMS LIKE CHRISTMAS CAKE ISN’T A THING AT TESCO EITHER🎄
FIRST EVERGREEN TREES INSTEAD OF CHRISTMAS TREES AND NOW ‘ICED FRUIT CAKE‘ INSTEAD OF CHRISTMAS CAKE❗️
WHAT IS GOING ON AT TESCO? 🇬🇧
And the Daily Mail duly wrote it up: Tesco’s infuriates shoppers AGAIN as it ‘renames’ Christmas cake ‘fruit cake’… after sparking outrage with its ‘evergreen trees’.
And just as with the trees, Tesco had to come out and explain:
Our Christmas products are sold in our festive packaging, and the product names are designed to help customers understand what is in the pack, whether that is mince pies, a yule log or a fruit cake.
And again, this is nothing new. Having spent far more time than I should have researching this topic, I managed to find a 2015 Daily Express review of ready-made Christmas food that included:
- Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Golden Bow Iced Rich Fruit Cake, 1.7kg, £18
- Tesco Finest Decorated Winter Berry & Pine Cone Fruit Cake, 1kg, £20
- Waitrose Christmas Signature Spice Rich Fruit Cake, 1.3kg, £15
- Winner: M&S Ice Shard Cake, 1.7kg, £25
Co-op, Aldi, Morrisons and Lidl had ‘Christmas Cake’ in the name, and Sainsburys, Tescos, M&S and Waitrose didn’t. No one was calling for boycotts. No one was accusing anyone of ‘removing’ the word Christmas a decade ago. Everyone was smart enough to know a Christmas Cake when they saw one!
Although, to be fair, I did find a 2020 petition to demand that Sainsbury’s “make the brave and wise decision to reinstate the word ‘Christmas‘ on their Christmas cakes,” when someone noticed a ‘snowy tree iced fruit cake’ in their range. That petition got just 36 signatures, despite everyone being locked down and chronically online in December 2020. It certainly wasn’t deemed newsworthy!
Christmas stamps
The latest fury over on Twitter is over this year’s Royal Mail Christmas stamps. It hasn’t yet made it into the Daily Mail so far, thank goodness, but give it time…
Apparently, Baby Jesus and Mary having a Middle Eastern skin tone is a problem, as is their being depicted with halos, which has been interpreted as crescent moons and is therefore, apparently, subconscious Muslim messaging.
Which brings us to the pernicious messaging.
What’s behind this narrative
This can all seem rather silly on the surface. After all, no one who has visited a supermarket recently can miss the onslaught of Christmas branding that has been up for weeks. The idea that there is any attempt to ‘remove’ or ‘cancel’ Christmas is utterly absurd in real life. In reality, it seems to start earlier and get bigger every year.
But sadly, the idea that Muslims and other minorities are somehow offended by Christmas or that they are trying to stop us from celebrating has really taken hold. Some people really do believe this is happening, despite the evidence they see every time they visit a high street or supermarket.
When you see a claim that ‘they’ are cancelling Christmas or ‘offended’ by Christmas, they basically mean Muslims. It is just another part of the anti-Muslim rhetoric happening at the moment, feeding the narrative that Muslims are somehow trying to ‘take over’ and change British society. It is all aimed at sowing distrust and division within communities.
It is true that as Christmas has grown from being celebrated in and around the last week of December, to now encompassing November through to early January, it often gets called the ‘holiday season’ or ‘festive period’, which allows more people to feel included in the festivities and not just Christians. Most faiths have some sort of celebration at this time of year, including Jewish, Buddhist, Pagan and Sikh holidays, so it makes sense for marketing to be inclusive to them too. Including others in the festive season does not in any way diminish Christianity or ‘Britishness’
And let’s face it, this is all about marketing and consumerism and has little to do with the original message of the Nativity. Christmas trees, Christmas cakes and stamps are not sacred Christian symbols! They are all relatively new additions to British traditions.
I doubt Jesus would have minded plastic Tesco trees being called snowy pine cone trees, but he may well have been disturbed by the racism and anti-migrant rhetoric around at the moment.
Part 2 coming up
This is already quite long, so look out for part 2 where I will try and do fairly rapid debunks and/or explainers for some of the manufactured outrage stories from the last few years surrounding Christmas, for when your Facebook uncle starts down the “they’re cancelling Christmas” route!
Next time he complains about ‘Winter’ beaks, renamed Christmas markets, Muslims being offended, or the school nativity gone woke, you’ll have the facts at hand to gently push back.
First published on Emma’s Substack, Monk Debunks, to which you can subscribe!
